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Email overload? Mailbox takes on the desktop inbox

Suffering from email overload? Relief may be coming to the desktop. Mailbox is rolling out Mailbox for the Mac. Mailbox is the popular app for iOS and Android that makes emails faster and easier to sort.

Don't worry, Silicon Valley feels your pain -- and relief may be coming to the desktop.

Mailbox is beginning to roll out the Macintosh version of its popular mobile app for iOS and Android.

Mailbox is one in a new wave of mobile apps taking on email, the decades-old technology that everyone loves to hate -- and that has only gotten more aggravating now that messages vibrate in our pockets, too.

The idea: to make email faster and easier to sort.

Mailbox lets users swipe to archive, delete or add emails to lists such as "to read" or "to buy." It also has a "snooze" feature that lets you put off emails until later.

You can even rely on an automated system to weed out long threads, spam and other messages Mailbox predicts you are going to archive or that you won't get to right away.

Mailbox was so successful in making email more mobile friendly that Dropbox bought Orchestra, the company that makes it, for about $100 million in March 2013.

A key part of Mailbox's master plan to fix email has always been to tackle the desktop inbox. That's where people really cope with the seemingly endless flow of digital correspondence, said Gentry Underwood, CEO of Orchestra.

"We have had lots and lots of requests for a complementary experience on the desktop," he said.

Mailbox has a feature that lets you "snooze" emails until later.(Photo: Mailbox)

People tend to glance through emails on their phones to spot anything that demands immediate attention, but it's not until they sit down in front of their computer that "the real work of email gets done," Underwood said.

The desktop version brings many of the gestures on Mailbox's mobile app to the desktop.

For example, instead of swiping the screen, you swipe the trackpad to delete, archive or snooze an email.

Another nifty feature: You can snooze an email until you can get back to your desk. When you open inbox, it reappears at the top. Or you can snooze a message until you open the inbox on phone, say when you need those driving directions or grocery shopping list.

You can also pick up writing an email on your phone where you left off on your computer or vice versa.

That kind of syncing of the experience between the desktop and mobile devices is something people now expect, Underwood said.

"When we talk about living in the mobile era, that's really kind of short hand for living in a multi-device and multi-screen era," he said. "People expect the apps that they rely on the most to flow seamlessly among different devices, operating systems and form factors. There is an expectation that you can just pick up on any device where you left off work on another."

Mailbox showed off a preview of its desktop product in April. On Tuesday it's beginning to extend invitations to the 150,000 or so people who signed up for the mailing list.

The product is still in beta. Mailbox will roll it out slowly to collect feedback and make sure it's working well before releasing it more broadly, Underwood said.

Good news for users of Mailbox on mobile devices and on desktop: Mailbox is also releasing a feature that its iOS and Android users have been clamoring for: drafts.